{"id":5607,"date":"2011-11-09T13:02:16","date_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/?p=5607"},"modified":"2011-11-09T13:02:16","modified_gmt":"2011-11-09T20:02:16","slug":"what-are-the-odds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2011\/11\/09\/what-are-the-odds\/","title":{"rendered":"What are the odds?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/whataretheodds.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5609 aligncenter\" title=\"whataretheodds\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/whataretheodds.jpg?resize=525%2C409&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"525\" height=\"409\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s multiply together a bunch of numbers which are less than one and see how small they get!<br \/>\nIf that sounds like fun, then you&#8217;ll love this\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/boingboing.net\/2011\/11\/09\/great-moments-in-pedantry-the.html\">sleek new infographic<\/a>\u00a0(of which the above is just the teaser) posted this morning at BoingBoing. The graphic is based on <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/abinazir\/2011\/06\/15\/what-are-chances-you-would-be-born\/\">this blog post<\/a> by\u00a0Dr. Ali Binazir, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/dr-ali-binazir\/\">apparently<\/a> has an AB (same as a BA) from Harvard, an MD from the UC San Diego School of Medicine, and an M.Phil. from Cambridge.<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll save you the effort of clicking through: the good doctor estimates the probability of &#8220;your existing as you, today&#8221;. His estimate consists of (what else?) multiplying a bunch of raw probability estimates together without conditioning! And I&#8217;ll give you a hint as to the conclusion: the odds that you exist are basically zero! Astounding.<br \/>\nI should add that it seems he was forced to add a disclaimer that &#8220;It\u2019s all an exercise to get you thinking&#8230;&#8221; and (obliquely) admit that the calculation is bogus at the end of the post, however.<br \/>\nIs there any branch of mathematics which is abused so extravagantly as probability? I think these sorts of abuses are beyond even the most egregious statistical claims, no?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s multiply together a bunch of numbers which are less than one and see how small they get! If that sounds like fun, then you&#8217;ll love this\u00a0sleek new infographic\u00a0(of which the above is just the teaser) posted this morning at BoingBoing. The graphic is based on this blog post by\u00a0Dr. Ali Binazir, who apparently has &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/2011\/11\/09\/what-are-the-odds\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;What are the odds?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28,42,48,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extralusionary-intelligence","category-mathematics-basterdizations","category-nitpickers-paradiso","category-off-the-deep-end"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dabacon.org\/pontiff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}